The present invention relates in general to preventing trail edge smear of an image produced by an electrostatographic reproduction apparatus, on a receiver member, and more particularly to a mechanism for facilitating separation of a receiver member from the dielectric web of an electrostatographic reproduction apparatus in a manner to substantially prevent trail edge smear of an image on such receiver member.
In typical commercial electrostatographic reproduction apparatus (copier/duplicators, printers, or the like), a latent image charge pattern is formed on a uniformly charged dielectric member. Pigmented marking particles are attracted to the latent image charge pattern to develop such image on the dielectric member. A receiver member is then brought into contact with the dielectric member. An electric field, such as provided by an electrically biased roller, is applied to transfer the marking particle developed image to the receiver member from the dielectric member. After transfer, the receiver member bearing the transferred image is separated from the dielectric member and transported away from the dielectric member to a fuser assembly at a downstream location. There the image is fixed to the receiver member by heat and/or pressure from the fuser assembly to form a permanent reproduction thereon.
It has been found that electrostatographic reproduction apparatus of the above described type, at times, exhibit a defect observable in image quality where the image over the trail edge of the receiver member is smeared. It was generally believed that this particular image defect was caused when the lead edge of the receiver member entered the fuser assembly with the trail edge beyond the transfer roller nip. However, manipulation of related electrostatographic process characteristics, vector velocities of the receiver member, pre-transfer vacuum transport, and fuser assembly to reduce this image defect manifestation have resulted in only a slight improvement thereof.